Foreign fans shunned Bledisloe Cup, says HKRFU

Hong Kong’s rugby governing body said yesterday a lack of foreign interest was to blame for the poor turnout at this year’s prestigious Bledisloe Cup clash between Australia and New Zealand.

Saturday’s fourth and final Test, won with the last kick by Australia, was widely hailed as the most exciting meeting of the world’s top two sides for a decade but a crowd of just 26,000 turned out to watch the action in the 40,000-capacity Hong Kong Stadium.

Many rugby fans were thought to have baulked at the eye-watering ticket prices, ranging from 880 to 1,250 Hong Kong dollars (130 to 160 US) for adults.

But the Hong Kong Rugby Football Union said around the same number of tickets had been sold locally this year as in 2008, when the series last came to the southern Chinese city, playing to a near-capacity crowd.

“We are missing several thousand travellers as compared to 2008,” Sean Moore, the union’s Bledisloe Cup spokesman, said.

“In that year there were 7,000 official travel packages sold – this year, far less than 1,000. If we add that to this year’s attendance we would be at 32,000 or 33,000, with travellers from Asia making up the difference in 2008 to get us to 36,000 which was our attendance in that year.

“I think it is a mix of economics and planning for the Rugby World Cup 2011 that depressed the international travel market this year.”

The New Zealand and Australian unions have treated the Asian Tests as a potential cash cow after the success of 2008 which generated a reported two million dollars for each nation, with even bigger financial rewards thought to have come from Tokyo last year.

But there will only be two Bledisloe Tests as part of a scaled-down Tri Nations series next year because of the World Cup in New Zealand, and there are no plans to bring the cup back to Asia.